Quest Expansion - Flipside

This is an idea I’ve been toying with as an expansion for the regular Quest rules. Please leave comments on the strengths an weaknesses of this idea.
Please feel free to plagerise concepts all you want. If you can bothered giving me a nod in any publications using this material then great. If you want to give me money, I’ll take it! :smiling_imp:

Quest - Flipside
Quest rules expansion
Modules often call for NPC “parties” of Orcs and their ilk. They are often very much like a party & sometimes don’t even encounter the party face to face. Why can’t these parties, with player party goals, just be played by PC’s? Because they often represent the “bad” side. If you look at it differently it’s simply a difference of culture. What is culturally acceptable for a group to do? This is what divides their goals.
The culture difference is often simply racial, ie. Orks have a goal because it benefits Orks, and that goal is often opposed by the “player” side because it benefits the “player” side to do so.

So how do we “player” party the “flipside” of Quest? Simple really. What’s your cultural perspective? Typically the NPC’s are monstrous races, orks, trolls, undead etc. They simply have a different cultural perspective than other races.

We already have cultural flipsides in game, represented by the Morquendi Elves, and the Trollkin… so do we have room for a couple (few) more? And so we look at the flipside.

Orks are stupid, too stupid to be played by players but they do have cousins, for arguments sake called Uruks. They are smarter than Orks, and could fill the racial flipside of Dwarves. For 5cp they might have 4HP, Die Hard and Undisciplined minds (-5mp) or some such? They would require green-dark skin (paint or mask) and possibly lower jutting fangs as racial costume.

Occasionally a necromancer abandons/loses their horde of undead, and a small proportion of them retain their original soul. When abandoned/lost they regain their free will and band together, and over time this has created a new society, the Forgotten. Not true undead but not living these forgotten souls seek acceptance in the unforgiving and misunderstanding world. For 3-5cp they might be the most mistrusted race, suffer 50% penalty (rounding down) from healing spells and be immune to sleep, charm and fear. Base 4HP. They would require heavy makeup or a mask as racial costume. They are the flipside to humans. Tentatively I would be keen to make them even more interesting by giving them a “FEED” ability, by which they can regain 1HP by eating parts of a recently deceased corpse (including undead). Usable once per combat and the corpse must be freshly killed (within 5 minutes). Player cannot carry around bits to feed on. Feeding takes 1 minute and needs to be role-played. If this was to be used I would suggest that they cannot benefit from magical healing for 10 minutes after using this ability. One would suggest they also can’t bleed to death, not having biology and all. Also vulnerable to Turn Undead (Major) only.

Morquendi are already the flipside to Quendi Elves, Trollkin are kind of neutral to both but given their Troll blood fit the monstrous part.

As an expansion to the racial costumes Elves (both types) should require pointed ears and the Morquendi should have a small indication to indicate their dark nature. The piece of nature should be in addition to this or discarded.

Trollkin should require a mask or further costume such as tusks (lower fangs) and face paint to designate them as inhuman (a piece of stone isn’t enough). Skin tone could vary green-grey to blue?

Rules of Engagement
At present we don’t encourage or rather definitely don’t encourage members of parties to betray or harm other party members and Flipside races are not immune to that clause. However if they are playing on the other side of the fence then there’s bound to be conflict sooner (more than likely) or later.

How can we mitigate this in game? We assign territory to each. Kingdom(s) for Elves, Dwarves, and Humans. Border lands to be contested. Savage Enclaves for the others.

Within the areas defined as Zelandia there would exist border lands… not officially part of any Kingdom, and in the wild lands beyond lie the Savage Enclaves.

So a Quest game might normally be held in the many Realms of Quest, within the Kingdoms of Zelandia, the border lands or in the Savage Enclaves. All 3 might be represented in a game, with the borders of each “faction” being marked CLEARLY in some manner (like flags in pairs on either side of pathways).

Each faction also requires a “Tavern or Inn” to function as a safe house. It is assumed to be full of people from that faction and is therefore not subject to being raided or robbed. Only those of that faction may enter it. This can also be expanded to a cordoned village, which again would be assumed to be fully populated and guarded.

In an opposed factions land a player is able to be attacked by the opposing faction if they so choose, unless they come under a banner of truce. They don’t have to be listened to, and may simply be ejected from the area. The banner of truce is not to be misused, constituting an act of war… your faction leader will have you hung (dead with no return) for breaching its conditions.

In border lands, or contested lands, challenges may be issued and if accepted then the accepter sets the duel conditions. Upon defeat the losing party must leave the immediate area (if not dead). Attacking outside of the Challenge constitutes an act of war and your faction leader will have you hung (unless you orders of war… in which war has been declared and all courtesies are suspended)

Aiding or interfering with a duel constitutes an act of war.

If the other side breaks the rules of engagement then the affected party may retaliate without breaking the rules of engagement themselves.
The offending party is still responsible regardless of whether they are counter-attacked or not. The offender’s only real options are to surrender for judgment, or flee to their own lands and do some serious groveling or plea bargaining a settlement for their actions. Players which fail to account for their actions will eventually be hunted down as outlaws.

First time offenders will often see leniency, 3rd strike will result in permanent death (unless you can afford a massive bribe)

True NPC’s
True NPC’s would largely be exempt from some of the conditions, because they either are not aligned to either faction (free agents) or they just don’t care. The usual canon fodder of Orks, Undead, villagers etc. are unlikely to be concerned with the rules of the two greater societies. Of course this means either faction could hire them to attack each other without fear of reprisal or that they will attack the players as part of plot outlines without hindering the game.

More Rules?
The beauty of this expansion to Quest is the minimal increase in rules beyond the Rules of Engagement and new races.

The current classes require virtually no change to incorporate the new races, although it is kind of weird that we might have Forgotten or Orcish Paladins.
CoE still works much the same; however flipside races may have cultural differences that mean CoE is interpreted differently.

Furthermore Quest games not need to be set up to incorporate Flipside rules every game but Flipside characters could easily adventure along regular players as there’s nothing to stop individual ‘faction’ members from co-operating. I mean we’re all a bit mercenary anyways… and it does provide a fun bit of role-playing… mistrust, poorly hidden prejudice, cautious discovery, barely contained hatred…

Spells
A new game item generated by a spell “Safe Helm” could allow combat between factions without the drawbacks of character death and being stripped of all the items worked so hard to get. It would be a one off get out of jail free card and be available at the town centre at a cost (say 50gp).
This spell/item would trigger when the holder of the token was dropped to 0HP or less, instantly teleporting them to the nearest safe point or “Tavern or Inn” for their faction. It would also apply First Aid thereby returning them to 0HP. After 1 minute they would regain 1HP and find a healer to rejoin the game.
Subjects returned this way should suffer a penalty for a period of time i.e. weakened and unable to use magic or something suitable.

Summary

New races

Uruks 5CP, 4HP, Diehard, -5mp

Forgotten 3-5CP, 4HP, 50% Healing penalty,(Feed?), Immunities: Sleep/Charm/Fear
Rules of Engagement
Faction hostility within borders of Kindoms of Zelandia, Savage Enclaves, Borderlands.

Faction Towns, Taverns & Inns (Faction safe areas)

Flag of Truce/Parley

Challenge rules in Borderlands.

Acts of War
First time offenders will often see leniency, 3rd strike will result in permanent death (unless you can afford a massive bribe)

Spells
Safe Helm – A teleport to safety in times of dire need (6th level)

Do you play World of Warcraft? :slight_smile:

In most online games players play both sides of the conflict. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work and in fact be a great deal of fun, in a LARP situation. it would be more complicated for the game organiser, having to have basic plot for two opposing factions (assuming that it’s not just head to head competition for one particular goal all the time, which it doesn’t sound like).

The “evil” side would have to be more fleshed out, which would be a nice change. Mordavia’s monsters were pretty one-dimensional. :smiling_imp: “bash, slash, shout, kill, die” Oh, and it would be nice if you didn’t HAVE to be really ugly. Evil elves and vampires are ok, but maybe just a race of evil humans without having to be dead or otherwise “monstery”.

Sometimes its big fun to be bad.

QW game tend to have plots for both sides anyway - sometimes these are mutually exclusive, sometimes it requires both sides to cooperate in order to win. Occasionally it is better all round if the heros ‘loose’ - even for the heros :wink: .

We have had issues in the past getting enough ‘heros’ because people were having too much fun playing monsters! Especially after we gave up on trying to get our monsters to wear facepaint.

I think what Jarrd is talking about is simply allowing the development of anti-hero characters. The only time this becomes problematic is that if we pit ongoing characters against each other, it runs a very good chance of escalating into vendetta. We have had this before, where things got out of hand, and one character was continually trying to assinate another another character for some percieved slight. This can really $%^&-up the game, and is generally a Bad Thing. That particular player has moved on and is no longer with QW.

The general idea of having PCs on all sides sounds good to me.

I’m not sure about the rules of engagement, they sound a bit artificial. It would promote more IC roleplay if any agreements on engagement were built into the setting, not just OOC rules. Therefore they would be enforced by play, mostly by PCs. Of course, if your monster cultures are of a chaotic disposition I’m not sure why they would respect such rules.

Personally I think a better approach is to create sides that aren’t so diametrically opposed. Give them both reasons to fight (and compete in other less lethal ways) and reasons to cooperate too, and you won’t need OOC rules of engagement.

EDIT: I think it’s fine for PCs to have vendettas, so long as they are enjoyable IC things and not taken out of character. Vendettas make conflict personal, which can lead to some intense roleplay. But it should be the characters in conflict, not the players. The players shouldn’t continue vendattas across multiple characters, that would be a sign of taking the conflict out of character.

But fuck up the game for who? In Jared’s model the story can’t fuck up, and if it does, that’s just the story :wink:

Jared, you might be interested in Will Wright’s keynote at SXSW last week. It’s a computer game conference and he’s talking about computer games but I think he strikes on something similar here - that games aren’t for creators to “tell stories” but instead to act as amplifiers for their players’ creativity.
wonderlandblog.com/wonderlan … wrigh.html

It is not good when it generates and goes out of game as well as in, however :frowning:.

Right, so fuck up the game when you’re not playing. Yeah, that’s not so good, but I think it’s “a player thing” that organisers can only do so much to prevent.

Yes my idea parallels WOW with concepts taken from the game within it. While the race inclusions seem hardly original I think they are commonly liked in the fantasy genre. I personally like playing montrous “heroes”.
I think Ange and Alexia know where I’m going… I believe they’ve had quite a lot of fun playing monstrous types.
If they were available I’d be playing a montrous character now.
By the way if you have an idea of a cool race you think could fit into this kind of expansion then please let me know.
Monstrous characters are NOT anti heroes but heroes of their culture. This is where Flipside comes from… it is the cultural flipside… the racial flipside. They often have polar views but similar goals to one another. Good and Bad are not the concepts I’m trying to get here, just another point of view that cultures have. Not hard to think of real world examples of cultural flipsides, see the 300 thread if you don’t know what I mean.

The rules of engagement are not OOC and are meant to imply how two different ruling bodies coexisting within close proximity would deal with each other without mutual destruction. If the two “sides” exist in a fragile state of truce, both misunterstanding the cultural differences of the other. These rules are not game mechanics they are supposed to be LAW (that is IC regulations) imposed by both sides rulers. This means there is nothing to stop players breaking this law except the consequences of their actions. So they “player” who decides he can assasinate players of the other side at will finds his character irretreviably dead by at most his 3rd crime.
With the LAW on your side then challenges allow competition between opposing (though they need not oppose all the time). It could be left free form but with a IC law with IC consequences means it would self regulate.
If there was a percieved slight then a challenge would solve it. Cheating would ruin this of course but you can’t stop it if someone really wants to do it.

EDIT:The “Safe Helm” spell would also help lower the death rate. This is pure mechanics sadly but frees up the action. It would also mean that would be assassins would be foiled most of the time. The intention being that any action that would cause a character to drop to 0HP or below would end up at their safe house on 1HP (after 1 minute of being there), even if silent killed. You would have to buy or cast or bargain for the spell everytime it was used but its quite a nice insurance policy. (you know what I mean Telpe)

EDIT:In non Flipside this spell would not be of use as each faction may not have a safehouse in the area. Alternatively it would take them out of the area, and require the player to stay out of game for some time period (10-30mins?) to represent them hiking back to the area from the nearest safe house etc.

Alista has a very usefull in game mechanic (IC too) called the “Angel of Justice” which is very useful when a “player” is thought to be cheating or otherwise trying to ruin the game for others. I will not elaborate as technically I don’t know about it but you can probably guess on the use and usefulness of this.

Quest games very often have a NPC side which has the same goals as the player party but only slightly different reasons for doing so.
Most games involve a party being hired by someone like the King of Hamiltonia to solve said “Quest” so without much extra writing this could also be achieved for NPC “Quests”, which would of course no longer be NPC “Quests”. We’d still need NPC’s etc to drive somethings along and die horribly when required of couse.
EDIT:This wouldn’t need to be in place every game, just when it suited. All races should be able to play “party” even if Flipside isn’t being used. It would just imply they are being a “mercanary” at that time.
"Quest"ions?
Jared :smiley:

I believe you are talking about the angel of death. I also will not elaborate, but in over 15 years I think we have only had to use this mechanism once (or maybe twice). Suffice it to say that this is an in-game mechanism to deal with severe cheats, if you ever meet the angel of death, chances are everyone else in the game will realise it before you do; such is the mindset of severe cheats.
The angel of death may be sent out by the GWAs following multiple player complaints.

Dangerous play however, may result in instant expulsion from the game. Once again, this is something we contemplated once, but have never actually had to do. Most RPers, after all are out for fun, not blood.

For character justice, of course, there is always the King’s magistrate :wink:
Hint: don’t get caught trying to bribe or bespell the magistrate - thus speaks the voice of experience from a party GM who has seen a party fail in said attempt.

Oops my mistake, Angel of Death… what I meant is, if this expansion was deployed and a single character sought to exploit it by simply trying to kill those of the other side for whatever reason, then the Angel of Death could be dusted off for the purpose of punishing them.

EDIT: Punish might not be the right word… but it is possible for a player to kill off a good few characters if they so chose… and there does need to be a consequence.

Sadly, whatever we do, you occasionally encounter someone who cares nothing about the experience of others, regardless of rules in place and they can ruin the game for everyone.

Jared

Jared, if you want a chance to play flipside within current rules have you considered asking for a were hunt? You could get your character infected with lycanthropy. It has happened before. It tends to end up being not a good idea to play your character at full moon, however. I think the other characters who caught lycanthropy eventually got cured.

Its a good idea Erin BUT as a player with a Druid character, Lycanthropy is a gift… for a shapechanger like a Druid lycanthropy is simply another tool in defeating the enemies of nature, given that a Druid has control of their shapechanging abilities.
Put simply I wouldn’t seek a cure. :smiling_imp:

Jared

Ah, I imagine you would gain some benefits for lycanthropy - but there would be disadvantages as well. For a start, a large number of people assume that all lycanthropes are evil, or at least seriously deranged. There could be all sorts of social tensions here:
Someone ate my sheep - blame the lycanthrope!
Someone killed my serfs - blame the lycanthrope
N’Durg sent a mighty earthquake and wiped out our citadel - blame the lycanthrope, its existence offends the gods!

Not to mention social events - who dares come into casual contact with the dirty lycanthrope - you might catch it too!

Then there’s the thing with the moon - I imagine lycanthropes would suffer servere PMS…

As I say, there would be disadvantages as well as advantages. Your friendly GWAs would have to work out the details, but I have a few ideas :wink:

The more you say the more attractive it is Erin. Hmm now where to find a werewolf…
As I see it all of the disadvantages are unimportant or less intrusive for a Druid… already a shapechanger. So intrinsically that gives control over when changes occur.
Some literature (a AD&D 2nd ed rule expansion) even suggests some Druids dedicate their abilities as a shapechanger to lycanthropy over all other forms so as to make themselves a more powerfull weapon of nature.
As far as the peasants blaming werewolves for everything… wouldn’t a peasant witnessing a druids regular shapechange think they’re a lycanthrope anyways?
I still can’t see the drawbacks.
Jared

Trust me there would be disadvantages. Have you ever tried to cast a wish spell with Alista as a GM? It pays to write out your full wording in extremely detailed almost-leagalise. A good GM can find a disadvantage in almost anything :smiling_imp:. Mind you a good GM usually doesn’t bother unless the player is trying to unbalance the game.

Anyway, the lycanthropy thing is something I plan on discussing with Alista for reasons beyond this discussion, so we may have some guidelines in place soon. It may be that we will play-test this for a while with a NPC, but who knows, you may get your wish (no promises) - if it stuffs the game up too much, we can arrange a module where the aim is for the party to hunt you down and cure you! :slight_smile:.

Warning: your GWAs may also decide that lycanthropy is a degenerative disease.

Oddly enough, I really enjoy lycanthropy in larp. I think it’s the “could change into a monster” thing - the sinking feeling that you’re a powerful but uncontrollable secret weapon. I’d come down in Winter for a quick stint as a shapeshifter - being hairy all over is too hot any other time of the year!

Yes Erin I can imagine there would be disadvantages. And I have some idea how these would go. In fact they would probably end up being really annoying knowing Alista.
If those disadvantages perverted way past the common werewolf concepts (like what happens in Quest occasionally) then I’d probably not be as interested.
Like making it degenerative… That flies in the face of every werewolf myth/concept out there.

Jared